Wellness Blog

When a patient comes to our office, we have a number of techniques to address their issues. It just determined based upon age, has the patient had a current experience with a chiropractor. Perhaps somebody comes in and they haven't had a good experience with hands-on adjustment. We might want to utilize our instrumentation. Sometimes somebody's too fragile or acute. The pain is so s-

It would probably be safe to assume that most people have taken a mental health day or two or five in their lives. Again, it would be safe to assume that most people don’t tell their bosses this. They call in sick or come up with another excuse that is not as stigmatized as admitting you need some time to take care of your mind. Clare Miller, director of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health, a division of the American Psychiatric Association Foundation says, “We know from literature that there is a huge amount of calling in sick because of mental health issues.”

Mental Health and the American Workplace

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that in 2014 about 1 in 5 American adults experienced a mental health problem, and 1 in 25 American adults had a major mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses in the United States, affecting 18% of American adults.

In 2013, 1 in 6 Americans reported taking psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants or sedatives.

Ninety percent of employers now offer employee assistance programs that deal with mental health issues. Charles Lattarulo, the head of American Express’ Healthy Minds campaign told CBS News, “Our global mental health strategy is the belief that we can reduce stigma, that we can make this a safe place to have a mental illness. We embed mental health into the fabric of our culture.”

The Stigma of Mental Illness

Many different factors contribute to mental illnesses, including biological (physical illness, brain chemistry), social (trauma, abuse), and genetic (family history of mental illness) issues. The Partnership for Workplace Mental Health urges employers to “Encourage employees to seek care when they need it by educating the workforce that mental illnesses are real, are medical illnesses rather than conditions of weak character or willpower, and can be effectively treated. Short- and long-term psychological treatment has been shown to improve work abilities in people with anxiety disorders.”

While the stigma around mental health is gradually lessening, many of the responses to Parker’s now-viral tweet demonstrate that society still has a long way to go when it comes to understanding and treating mental health and self-care.

Self-Care and Wellness

Depending on your situation, there are many ways to start taking care of yourself if you are suffering from a mental illness. Mental health is just as important as physical health, and the two often are dependent on each other. Organizations like Mental Health America and GoodTherapy.org offer many examples of self-care, including eating right, exercising regularly, meditating, attending therapy, and connecting often with good friends. Even maintaining good posture has been shown to improve the moods of those suffering from mild to moderate depression!

Physical health is only one facet of your overall well-being. In order to be your best self, it is necessary to take care of your mind as well as your body, and tweets like Madalyn Parker’s show that society is starting to understand how important self-care is to lead a happy and productive life.

You know what? I wish I knew. I wish I knew if I had a subluxation or not. The fact of the matter is that we gauge our health based on how we feel. How we feel is not necessarily how we function. How do you know the difference whether your functioning well or you're not? I mean, I wish I had a red light in the middle of my forehead that lit up that said, "Steve, you've got a sub ... you have a subluxation and it needs to be corrected." Fact of the matter is, is we don't know when we have a subluxation, and that's why checkups are so valuable.

The other question is, what is a subluxation? It's not necessarily a pinched nerve. Because the term pinched nerve has the connotation that there's pain, but pain is always the last thing to occur and the first thing to go away of any disease process. I catch a cold long before my sneeze. Your back problem has occurred long before you feel back pain. Why wait for the pain? Why not treat the problem before the pain comes out? The beautiful part about it is we have technology that allows us to see where the subluxation is before you have a crisis. Would you rather take care of the problem early or late? The answer to the question is, we don't know, but we can find out.

What’s got you stressed today? Crazy traffic? A lengthy to-do list? A needy family member or friend? You’re not alone. In everyday life, there’s good and bad stress. Good stress, also termed eustress, challenges you to adapt to situations in order to succeed. Bad stress, or distress, activates the “fight or flight” response in your brain, gets your heart pumping, promotes confusion, and often causes performance anxiety.

Stress and Chiropractic Care

A 2008 study demonstrated that chronic stress can attack and weaken the immune system, making people more susceptible to some diseases, such as diabetes mellitus or ulcerative colitis. Some people are easily able to reduce their stress and cope due to their personalities, genetics, or support system, but it’s not always that simple. Luckily, researchers have found that chiropractic adjustments are a great way to naturally help reduce stress in the body and promote wellness overall.

The PET scans found that the CSM altered brain activity in the areas of the brain responsible for processing pain and stress, as well as greatly reduced cortisol levels, the chemical that is released in response to stress.

More recently, a 2017 study expanded on this research. Researchers tracked the PET scans of 21 male participants taken before and after spinal manipulation therapy (SMT).

The PET scans showed metabolic changes in brain and skeletal muscles. These changes are associated with reduced sympathetic nerve activity, which induces relaxation.

The results of this study shows that the chiropractic adjustments actually reduced patients’ stress by changing their brains, and that regular chiropractic care could boost the body’s natural defense against chronic stress and disease.

Healthy, Drug-Free Stress Relief

“Millions of people receive medical advice that links stress relief to pharmaceutical drug use. Safe, long-term health care demands that attention be turned to the proper reduction and management of stress using science and research that point to a healthy alternative,” says an article on dailyrx.com.

Chiropractic care could be that ultimate healthy alternative. Stress is a natural part of life, but when it starts to consume your life, it quickly becomes threat to your health, physically and mentally. Chiropractic adjustments can help return the skeletal system to a more balanced, relaxed state and quiet the “fight or flight” impulses in your mind, relieving stress and keeping you healthy in the long run.

Dr. Levine talks about how chiropractic care fits into healthcare and how it helps promote wellness

Published Thursday, 13 July 2017

Video Transcript - How Does Chiropractic Work?

If you have not gotten the Searching for Health booklet from South Orange Chiropractic, this will explain what we do and why it works. Because the most beautiful thing is the definition of health. If you don't know what health is, how can you achieve it? We go into great detail on what health is. My question to you is, would you rather be healthy or just not sick? Well, a lot of people just don't want to be sick. They say they want to be healthy but their behavior is, "I just don't want to be sick." Because they do nothing. I'm not exercising more, I'm not watching my diet, I'm not supplementing, I'm not getting my nervous system checked. It's a false sense of health.

To be health you have to be proactive. Right? That's why we talk about consistency and frequency and anything that we do will breed success. You never get to the end of the book unless you read a little bit each day, or go from chapter to chapter. You never are successful in a gym unless you're going there frequently. You're never successful in your golf, getting your score down, if you're not practicing and hitting hundreds of balls each week. The things that we put our attention to and where our energy goes, the success will flow.

I always say be healthy by choice, not by chance. Too many people leave it to chance. I always say that be healthy by choice, choose to be healthy and do not leave it to chance. Too many people leave health to chance, that I'm okay today, I'll just wait till I break down tomorrow.

Researchers at Trinity College, Dublin conducted a study of over 4,000 Irish adults, age 60 and up, which determined a positive association between daily yogurt consumption and increased bone health.

Researchers measured the bone mineral density (BMD) as well as the physical function of the participants in order to determine their results. Traditional risk factors of osteoporosis including age, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption were taken into account when finalizing their conclusions.

Women who ate yogurt every day had a 39% lower risk of developing osteoporosis when compared with those who did not eat yogurt. The study authors observed a 52% lower risk in men.

Researchers also noted a 31% lower risk in women of osteopenia, a condition which is often a precursor to osteoporosis and involves the old bone being reabsorbed into the body faster than new bone can be created.

Besides promoting bone health, yogurt has numerous other health benefits. A 2016 UCLA study found that a Lactobacillus strain of bacteria, which you can find in yogurt, kombucha, and sauerkraut, can help reduce the risk of some types of cancer. Some yogurts can contain a lot of sugar, however, so it’s important to look for servings that contain 20 grams or fewer, according to Fitness Magazine.

Nerve impulses, life energy is affected by stress. Stress is huge. We think of stress generally in something that's bothering us or that we're thinking about. Stress comes in three forms. It's physical, it's chemical, it's emotional. Many of us have all three forms in play. Those three forms of stress will breakdown the nervous system. Increases the adrenal function. Increases blood pressure. Increases cortisol into the system, and that will break down neural function and your immune system. It's important that we identify the stresses.

Here in the office, not only are we dealing with the effects of stress which might be neck pain, back pain, headaches, but we're also identifying the causes of that stress. Maybe it's poor diet. Maybe it's lack of exercises which is probably number one. Maybe it's an old injury or fall that wasn't treated properly. Family stress especially around the holidays. Financial stress.

Either you live within your means or you don't. There's many people, regardless of their income, that have a great deal of stress and has no bearing on the dollar amount. It's how they manage it. Emotional, physical, chemical stresses. That's why our job is to get to the cause of the problem. Not just functionally, but on an emotional level, physical and chemical level.

There is good stress. Stress forces us to wake up every day and make a difference in society. The time I spent working with Seton Hall University and their basketball team, there was stress every time there was a tournament game. It was stress before each game. When that bell rang at the end and the two hands were over, the stress was over until we prepared for the next game. In sports, there's stress. In life, there's stress, but that forces us to produce and it forces us to rise to the occasion. Sometimes, we need to get uncomfortable in ourselves to grow to the next level.

Need another reason to eat some fruit every day? A new study from British and Chinese researchers shows a definite correlation between eating fresh fruit and a lower risk of developing diabetes. Many diabetics tend to avoid consuming fruit, opting for vegetables instead because of some fruits’ high sugar content. However, the results of this study share a different story.

Published on April 11th of this year, the study followed a half million Chinese adults between the ages of 30 and 79 for seven years.

About 19% of the participants reported consuming fresh fruit daily. Participants who had been previously diagnosed with diabetes were three times as likely to report never or rarely eating fruit.

At the end of the study, researchers found that those participants without diabetes at the start had a 12% lower risk of developing diabetes when compared with those who ate no fruit. Across the study, more frequent consumption of fruit was associated with a lower risk.

For participants who were already diabetic when the study started, those who consumed fruit at least three times a week had a 17% lower risk of fatality and a 13%-28% lower risk of developing of complications associated with diabetes such as heart and kidney disease.

This study was purely observational, so there is no clear reason why this correlation exists and results may have been affected by other factors such as the participants’ dietary and behavioral habits. Further research is needed.

The lead author of this study and a research fellow at the University of Oxford, Dr. Huaidong Du said, “The sugar in fruit is not the same as the sugar in manufactured foods and may be metabolized differently. And there are other nutrients in fruit that may benefit in other ways.” So despite some fruits’ high sugar content, this study shows that a daily dose of sweet, fresh fruit could actually prove beneficial for those already diagnosed with diabetes.